Bryan Cranston
Bryan Cranston
Bryan Lee Cranston is an American actor, voice actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He is best known for portraying Walter White on the AMC crime drama series Breaking Bad and Hal on the Fox comedy series Malcolm in the Middle. For Breaking Bad, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series four times, including three consecutive wins. After becoming one of the producers of Breaking Bad in 2011, he also won the award for...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth7 March 1956
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
What used to frustrate me going into an audition was that some inexperienced, lesser casting people would think that actors are acting only when they're speaking.
There are far more talented people doing voice work than I.
I can tell you for sure: people who are at their peak right now will not sustain that. You can't. It's against the law of nature.
It used to be that people would watch TV shows because they knew the characters would stay the same. Whether it's Archie Bunker or it's Thomas Magnum you watch it because it's like, 'I'm comfortable, this is the same guy.'
People would love to be rich, but they're looking for the easy way. Who wouldn't want to win the lottery? Just to score.
In order to be an actor you really have to be one of those types of people who are risk-takers and have what is considered an actor's arrogance, which is not to say an arrogance in your personal life. But you have to be the type of person who wants the ball with seconds left in the game.
If you're a person who complains about everything all the time, then you're just the boy who cried 'wolf.' But if you do it on occasion and about the right reasons, then people listen.
What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break the assumption.
I wish Americans thought more like Europeans when it comes to money and work. They take time off, they do what they love. We think work is the most valued commodity. Really the most valued commodity is time.
I'm just a big boy, I'm still just playing cowboys and Indians and astronaut and baseball player and all that stuff that I used to play as a kid.
I enjoy storytelling. I like to write it, I like to direct it, I like to act in it, I like to produce it. I like to be around storytellers. That's what excites me.
I think the best-written films or television series have a measure of the opposite of what they are.
That's the reason you want to become a star as an actor, to be able to have more control of your destiny.
The hardest work that actors have done, including myself, is on poorly written scripts. And when you first start out you do anything. I did a lot of crap. I did more crap than I can tell you. But you did it because you needed the money. You have to pay for your pictures and resumes, and classes and insurance and food like everybody else. In those days if it was crap you just didn't put it on your resume.